[CentOS-devel] Before You Get Mad About The CentOS Stream Change, Think About…

On Tue, Dec 15, 2020 at 2:03 PM Japheth Cleaver <cleaver at terabithia.org>
wrote:

> On 12/15/2020 11:02 AM, Mike McGrath wrote:
>
>
> On Tue, Dec 15, 2020 at 12:30 PM Phelps, Matthew <mphelps at cfa.harvard.edu>
> wrote:
>
>>
>> On Tue, Dec 15, 2020 at 1:00 PM Mike McGrath <mmcgrath at redhat.com> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> I'd also just add that while I find Johnny's characterization of what
>>> happened accurate, Ljubomir took a couple of leaps that I don't think
>>> existed.  Red Hat decided not to continue paying actual money for what was
>>> actively harming us and no longer providing the value that it once did.  No
>>> one, not even the board, could force Red Hat to continue paying for this
>>> project which was just not working for us.
>>>
>>
>> Thanks for admitting that the reason Red Hat did this was financial. This
>> BS about it being "a better way for Community input into RHEL" is just
>> that, BS.
>>
>>
> Ah, actually I didn't do that.  RHEL is and has been doing fine.  Don't
> confuse "value" with revenue.  CentOS Linux no longer served any purpose at
> Red Hat and I'll flip it back around as I did in the previous email.
>
> Why should Red Hat, or any company, continue to pay for something that
> isn't working out?
>
> If RedHat needed to justify or clarify the investment it was making in
> CentOS -- as a reminder: *after* taking the independent project under its
> wing and letting others snuff themselves out as superfluous -- then the
> professional thing to do would have been to go to the larger community
> about it.
>
> Present options, such as the rebuild being spun back out. Or discuss
> mechanisms for increasing CentOS->RHEL conversions. Or solicit direct
> funding options to get free-riders to contribute directly to CentOS Project
> expenses while still keeping a firewall in place.
>
>
>
>
>> Can we stop with the charade that this is supposed to be a good thing for
>> the CentOS community? It's not. It was never intended to be. It's a
>> punishment for us getting "free Red Hat" all these years.
>>
>>
> I don't think anyone's said that.  This is a massive change and disruption
> for the existing CentOS community.  90% of the community (by our estimates)
> will be able to stay on CentOS 7 until 2024 just as they expected.  We made
> sure the 10% on CentOS Linux 8 didn't continue to grow (thus trying to
> minimize impact).  We aren't punishing anyone and the fact that two other
> clones have already popped up is a testament to that.
>
> No, the fact that two other clones have popped up is a testament to OSS
> communities' ability to cope with events. The unexpected churn from having
> the distro pulled out is absolutely a punishment because it creates a great
> deal of work for all of us to return to the operational status quo with no
> real benefit.
>
> *Direct question: If the CentOS Project (via the Board), secures funding
> for expenses relating to the rebuild, does it get to continue CentOS Linux?*
>
>
>
Direct answer: Red Hat is out of the downstream building business.  None of
our other products have a downstream build sponsored by Red Hat, RHEL won't
either.  The cost was only one of many considerations here.

              -Mike


>
>
>> Well, you all see the reaction this has garnered around the world, and
>> it's all negative except for the Red Hat employees trying to convince us
>> it's a good thing. Nice try.
>>
>>
> Actually, things took an interesting turn around Thursday.  Once people
> understood what we actually announced much of the press has been very
> positive, and now that the shock has worn off, we're seeing quite a lot of
> support.
>
> "What you actually announced" was that CentOS+CR was going to be used
> internally for testing against future minor releases, and that any ideal of
> a binary-compatible rebuild was going away.
>
> I'm sure there's support from internal RH teams that for some reason
> didn't have access to internal RHEL minor release betas. I can't imagine
> who else this benefits in any way shape or form (except Oracle, Amazon, and
> promoters of Debian-derived distributions).
>
> "RedHat EL Stream" is a useful thing, and whether that's a Preview
> (post-QA), a Beta (intra-QA), or Rawhide (pre-QA), there's a place for it
> as an official way to provide feedback. But it's entirely orthogonal from
> the "North American Enterprise Linux Vendor" rebuild project.
>
>
>
>
> We all know differently. And we are all now making influential choices
>> that will hurt Red Hat.
>>
>>
> I don't mean to sound cold here but if you really want to talk about the
> business side of this....  If you don't have a budget and don't end up
> finding a home in our coming low-cost or free offerings (Fedora, CentOS
> Stream, UBI, or RHEL for developers, CI, Open Source, edu, mom/pop shops,
> etc).  Then what choices are you talking about?
>
> Anyone even tangentally associated with OSS is aware of the free rider
> problem. As written above, there were plenty of ways to approach this
> without forcing CentOS Linux to be canned prematurely in the middle of a
> major release support cycle, immediately after EL6 had gone EOL, and after
> RedHat's entry had seemingly removed the need for other projects to
> continue operations. Frankly, the lack of goodwill demonstrated here places
> both "free" RHEL and UBI into suspect categories.
>
>
> -jc
>
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